Valiant
by Nokomiss
Summary: Love, death, and insanity plague one couple's life over four months. Complete, and not your average soulmate story.


Valiant  
  
By Persephone  
  
Disclaimer: The idea of the Nightworld and Circle Daybreak belong to LJ Smith.   
  
  
Four months ago:  
  
  
"Love shack, baby!" A slightly chunky young woman sang cheerfully in an attempt to make shopping fun as she made her way through the grocery store. Her name was Leah, and she was trying to do her shopping. Trying. Leah was firmly convinced that grocery stores were invented by the devil himself as an exotic form of torture. And sadistic old women hung out here, too. They seemed to wait at corners for you, and then slam their Depends-filled carts into your leg in the exact same spot as the last old lady.  
  
Leah sighed and gave up the attempt at cheerfulness. She looked at her list to see how much torture was left, and was happy to see that only one item remained.  
  
"Okay. Chicken." she muttered to herself as she made her way to the meat counter. She managed to get to the poultry without being assaulted by a disgruntled senior citizen, and reached for a package of chicken breasts when...  
  
Some jerk tried to grab the same package. A quick glance proved the jerk to be male, twenty- something like her, and an obvious geek, from the pocket protector. Leah stubbornly kept her grip on the chicken, this one was on special, she wasn't letting go that easily when her hand brushed against the jerk-geek's and...  
  
Something happened. Something... not right, abnormal.  
  
Static shock ripped through her body as she lost her grip on the chicken, and she looked up, startled, to see her shock echoed in dull gray eyes.  
  
The package of chicken, in the meantime, hit the ground, and chicken juice splattered on Leah's pant leg. She looked down, wondering briefly what the bigger emergency was, the shock and geek or her newly stained khakis.  
  
Leah chose the khakis, simply because a stain was something normal, that had happened a million times and was definitely not as scary as what had just happened with...what was his name, the geek guy? Why did she even want to know his name?  
  
"Bram."  
  
"Excuse me?" Leah asked. Did she say all that out loud? Or was she just being that obvious... Obvious? About what? Why was she thinking all.... psychotic?  
  
"My name's Bram. Yours is?" Said the geek. Who was, Leah had to admit to herself, was kinda cute, in a chess-club kind of way.   
  
"Leah." She replied. "I really need to go and.. fix this." She motioned vaguely towards her pant leg.  
  
"Oh. Of course. I, uh, hope to see you again." Bram shuffled his feet as he spoke. That is just too cute, Leah though as she smiled back.  
  
"Yeah." Leah managed to further surprise herself by offering Bram her number as she headed for the bathroom in the faint hope that the chicken juice would come out.  
  
  
  
  
Three months ago:  
  
  
"Hi, sugar." Bramble Dechirant murmured into his soulmate's ear. She turned around, smiling at the boy she had met at the supermarket. Their relationship was dull by almost everybody's standards, a typical date consisting of watching TV at one of their houses, both content to simply be in each other's presence.   
  
The two had fallen for each other fast and hard, the soulmate link between then just an added bonus. The only major flaw in the relationship was the fact that Bram was a vampire, a lamia actually, but he had already been a member of Daybreak when they met.  
  
Why? He was just too softhearted to hurt anybody. He was the rare vampire that was meant to be born human, realized this, and lived his life accordingly. He was basically just a really nice guy who needed some plasma to survive.  
  
Leah Mercer had taken the news that no, humans were not the only intelligent life on Earth, well. She was perfectly alright with sharing her soul with a bloodsucker. In fact, soon she would be sharing her home with a bloodsucker as well. Bram was moving into her modest house soon, so that they didn't have to part ways to go home.  
  
They really were a perfect couple.  
  
  
  
  
Two months ago:  
  
"Happy birthday, love." Leah murmured to her soulmate. Bram had just turned twenty-four, and the happy couple was throwing a tiny party. Tiny as in two people. Leah had never really had many friends, mostly due to her low self-esteem that was rooted in a childhood of being called "fatty" and other derogatory names. Bram had a modest number of friends, almost all Daybreak acquaintances, but hadn't felt close enough to any to want them to invade the time he spent with Leah. They were nearly inseparable, except when she went to her self-defense classes.  
  
Those classes bothered him. She always seemed... preoccupied when she returned. She always told him that nothing was bothering her, and he didn't want to start a fight by insisting she tell him. She was a grown woman, if anything was really bothering her she would just tell him. She knew that there was nothing she could ever say to make him unhappy with her. Leah was his life, his love, and his soul.   
  
"Darling?" Leah asked suddenly, snapping Bram out of his reverie.   
  
"Yes, sugar?" Bram replied. Leah looked at him with big puppy-dog eyes and said, "I have to go out tonight. With the girls from self-defense."  
  
"It...It's my birthday, though. I thought we were going to..." Leah cut him off. "I know that's what you thought, but I have to go out tonight. I'm sorry if that inconveniences you."  
  
Bram stared at his lifemate, shocked by her behavior. She never snapped, never. Leah glared at him, and said tersely, "I'll be home by morning."   
  
Ten minutes later, after hearing the door slam and the car race away, Bram sat befuddled on the couch. She had deserted him. On his birthday. There had to be a good reason, didn't there? Bram did the only thing he could think of then, he called a friend that also took the self-defense class. Margare Cartwright was a sweet witch who had joined Daybreak after realizing that there were a lot more available human guys than witch. She was too shy to compete with the flirtatious, gorgeous witches who seemed to snare all the males. She picked up the phone after three rings.  
  
"Hello?"   
  
"Hi, Margare, this is Bram." Bram quickly explained the problem to the witch, who listened intently.  
  
"Well," said Margare, " I figured this might come up. It sounds to me like Leah is falling in with the hunters that are in the class."  
  
"Hunters?" Bram asked. Surely she couldn't mean...  
  
"Vampire hunters. They use classes like that to recruit. Lots of victims take the classes, and its usually easy for the hunters to pick them out of the crowd. Leah must have seemed like the perfect recruit for them."  
  
"Because she didn't think that vampires were evil?" Bram asked, feeling a pit open in his stomach. Leah had been distant lately, but he'd assumed it was just her was of adjusting to the rapid pace of their relationship. But if she was in with vampire hunters now...  
  
Maybe she just wanted to kill bad vampires. Or maybe she just wanted to learn what to do in case something bad happened. Or maybe she wanted him dead. They were all likely possibilities. Bram said a quick good-bye to Margare, and hung up the phone, staring blankly into the wall.  
  
What in the world was he going to do?  
  
  
  
  
One month ago:  
  
The yelling was becoming unbearable. Leah had been out late, again, with only the vague excuse of "being out with her friends" Bram knew the truth, of course. She was in league with the vampire hunters. Tonight, according to the 'shifter he had asked to tail Leah, she had helped three others kill two vampires.   
  
It wouldn't bother Bram so much if the two vamps had been killers, or vicious, or even insane. But no, they had been young girls, lamia that had been allowed off an enclave for a special visit to an uncle. Neither had been older than fourteen. The worst part of tonight, in his eyes, was that Leah had looked completely innocent when she returned home. No guilt for killing two children.  
  
Leah was becoming more of a monster than he was, than he had ever been. Bram had managed to not kill anyone yet in his twenty-four years, and did not plan on breaking his record anytime soon. He found the entire idea of murder distasteful, and was disgusted that Leah seemed to thrive on the act. She was insane, he realized, staring into her slightly glassy eyes. She was deteriorating before him.  
  
"Leah, what's wrong? Why are you acting this way?" Bram asked desperately, wanting noting in this world more than to have Leah better, whole, docile. Leah grinned at him in a way that unnerved him.  
  
"I'm just fine, darling, just hunky dorey!" Laughter. She sounded drunk, but Bram could small no alcohol on her, no drugs. She was sober, it was her mind that was wrong. "I had the greatest time tonight, next time I'll be sure to include you!" One eyelid winked at him, slowly.   
  
Bram decided in that instant that he needed to get away from Leah, as far away as possible. There was a Daybreak safehouse he could go to...  
  
If it wasn't too late.  
  
  
Now:   
  
The alley behind the video store was as cold and dark as popular horror films decreed that it should be, and the rasping breath of the huddled figure further completed the movie-esque vibe.   
  
How had things fallen apart so quickly, wondered the young man as he hesitantly peeked around the dumpster he huddled behind. She was coming, the end had to be near. They had been perfect together, absolutely perfect. There was no real need for her to be hunting him down like this, was there? Those damn hunters, they'd twisted everything around, made Leah doubt her sanity, made Leah doubt him. Margare had finally told him the things that the hunters did to make people believe them, horrendous things that had broken sweet Leah. No wonder she'd gone insane. He would have too.  
  
But...That didn't mean that Leah was innocent. She had only been... convinced of his heinous ways after she had proven herself worthy. She'd finally found her place, and friends, with the vampire hunters. They saw her as the perfect decoy, a large girl, a slow mover that the Nightpeople saw as weakness, an easy meal. She loved killing, and now she wanted to share her love with him. And even now, he'd never do anything to hurt her. Couldn't, even though that now spelled out his death.  
  
I don't want to be another statistic! I don't want to be added to the "Soulmates that didn't work" page in the Daybreak archives. But Leah was insane. There was no two ways around it. And now she was after him.   
  
"Hey, sugar." Murmured her husky soft voice. "I've been looking for you." Her eyes were dark with the shadows that lurked beneath the surface. Bram stared at his soulmate, the woman he'd known for only four months, and was scared. She wasn't all there, and seemed intent on his demise. Leah pulled a stake from her ugly brown purse, and grinned.  
  
Bram decided to run, undignified a response to a death threat as that may be. He couldn't get past Leah, though. She trapped him in the corner of the dumpster and wall, and used her weight against him. This was it. He was going to die at the hands of a mad human, his own soulmate. He was a vampire! He should be able to defeat her!  
  
But he couldn't spell her with his eyes, being bound at soul had overridden that route, and he couldn't hurt her. He was just too nice a guy. Even though her neck was awfully bare in this cool weather...  
  
All her delicate blue veins were visible against her pasty skin....  
  
He hadn't fed in a while...  
  
Bram's gray eyes melted to silver as these wrong, wicked thoughts fleeted through his mind. He couldn't, there was no way he'd hurt this weak being, his love, the other half of his soul.  
  
But her heart was thudding with anticipation, it sent gave off the bloodscent he loved most, the taste of triumph and glory in the nectar. It was at this point when blood was most like wine, and at its most intoxicating. All he had to do was...  
  
Almost without thinking, Bram sank his elongated fangs into the tender neck of his sweetheart. And oh, her heart was sweet. He could taste it in this hearty cocktail he now took into himself. Leah's whimpers were faint to his ears, which were filled with the pounding of her heart, and he was so drunk on the nectar that he almost didn't feel the wooden stake slide cleanly between his ribs.  
  
Bram could feel the wood poisoning him, felt that he only had seconds left in this existence, and felt the urge to kill rise in him. He shouldn't, killing was wrong...  
  
But what did it matter now?  
  
With this thought, Bram sank his fangs deeper into Leah's throat, and raked them across her neck until he reached her other ear. He died, tasting deathblood for the first time in his life, and wishing that things could have been different.  
  
The couple's bodies were found entwined with each other.  
  
The End  
  
  
***  
I love to hear what you think! Please don't shy from the review button!  
Thanks,   
Persephone 


End file.
